Blogs

ERIC NEE: What are the differences between traditional grant giving and using prizes as a way to stimulate social change?

THOMAS VANDER ARK: Quite simply, it’s the difference between push and pull. Traditional philanthropy is a push mechanism. You pick an organization, you make an investment, you may provide advice and performance management, and you hope that they are successful
and that the sector evolves as you had anticipated. Prize philanthropy is a pull mechanism where you set a goal, invite the world to compete, and hope to be surprised by the new money, the new minds, and the new methods brought to the competition.

The Ugly Result Of Human-Wildlife Conflict

Elephants that migrate through human populated areas of India are bound to enter into conflict with farmers and other land owners. Considering there is no "safe haven" or isolated area in all of India that is free of human habituation, elephant and human
conflict in inevitable. Living in such close proximity to each other has resulted in hundreds of animals falling into man-made ditches ("traps") and has caused others to be hit by cars.

The image shown here displays the ugly and cruel side of this conflict. The poisoning of migrating herds is a common tool used to rid of them completely. The elephant here is a victim of poisoning who also had a message carved into the side of it’s hide
that reads: "Paddy thief, elephant Laden". The culprit of this poisoning is equating these endangered animals with terrorists.

Down on the fish farm, workers could not understand why the number of brown trout had suddenly taken a dive. But close observation revealed the reason - an aquatic version of the Great Escape.

The resourceful fish are leaping 3ft out of the water and into an eight-inch pipe which brings fresh water into the farm near Alresford, Hampshire. Following their instincts the trout, cousins of the Atlantic salmon, then swim against the flow
for 30ft before finding freedom at the other end as they plop into a tributary of the River Itchen. Simon Johnson, director of the Wild Trout Trust, said: “Brown trout do have migratory tendencies and swim upstream, especially in November and December. “The
water coming down from the pipe is oxygenating the pond and this could be kicking in their natural instincts. “They might well think it is a waterfall and are trying to head up it to find a place to spawn.”

The Escape Committee were caught in the act by wildlife photographer Dennis Bright, 59. A farm worker said: “It is remarkable how they manage to jump so high and through such a small pipe. “We run a low-intensity farm and like to let nature
thrive so we don’t net our ponds. As a result we lose up to 40 per cent of our stock to predators every year. “To see us losing more fish through pipes that are designed to help them is a bit of a blow. But to be honest, if I were them I would be trying to
escape too. Good luck to ‘em.” Wildlife photographer Dennis Bright, 59, captured the amazing aerobatic fish earlier this week. He said: “It was an incredible sight. “Swimming against the current is instinctive for trout as they head up stream to spawn but
they are doing a remarkable job getting through that pipe.

"Increasingly, nonprofit experts are beginning to question one of the fastest-growing sectors of giving, the practice of building a donation into the purchase of items as varied as fine jewelry and Always feminine products.

What’s interesting is that some charities don’t even know that their brand is being used to entice shoppers to buy the primary product:

The WorldWildlife Fund, a major charity that works to preserve and protect animals and the environment, was among them. John Donoghue, its senior vice president, was disconcerted to learn that his organization was among a number of charities named as beneficiaries
of items bought from Barneys’ “Have a Green Holiday” catalog.

“Unfortunately, just like Barneys shoppers, we’re in the dark as to how or if Barneys and the manufacturers will fulfill their commitment to donate a portion of the proceeds from these products to W.W.F.,” Mr. Donoghue said.

Last week, (Dec 2007) Ashok Kumar in IFAW’s India office, lit the flames to a pyre of more than 127,000 smuggled pelts and skins of endangered species seized in India.

One of the routes to the decimation of wild species has been shut down: The fur trade of Srinagar in Kashmir valley. The process began some years back in 1997. The time had come, late no doubt, that a licensed trade in garments made from skins and furs of
wild species had to come to end.

The carnage of a wide range of wild species over decades, if not centuries, can be guessed at by a mind boggling number of fur garments and skins declared by licensed furriers of Kashmir. The stock of tiger skins and garments alone tallied more than 89.
In all, the stock of skins from wild species totaled more than 125,000.

The tradition was age old, going back perhaps 200 years or more. Trappers and hunters of wild species in forests of the Indian sub-continent and the Himalayan range sold their `produce’ to a small town trader, who in turn delivered these to major cities
such as Calcutta and the walled city of Old Delhi. The hub Gihara Gali later came to be known as Lane number eleven, the notorious wildlife trading alley. Actually, the word Gihara refered to a tribe of part time hunters turned wholesalers and taxidermists
of wild skins and furs, who also supplied the Kashmir fur industry. The oldest case of the infamous wildlife trader, Sansar Chand, a Gihara, dates back to 1988 - he was accused of selling 29,489 skins to Kashmiri traders. The list of species seized in this
case reads almost exactly as those now burned and included one tiger and five leopard skins. Jackal, wild cat and fox skins predominate. The case is still undergoing trial after 19 years.

In 1978, Ashok Kumar had sought an appointment with Sheikh Abdullah, the Prime Minister of J&K state. He was also called Sher-e-Kashmir (the Lion of Kashmir). Fur garments were on open sale in his state, in Kashmiri owned shops all over India and in Nepal.
He requested him to halt the carnage. His reaction was sharp: “mine is a tourism driven state, tourists from all over the world come to Kashmir, and they buy fur garments. That provides livelihood to my people.” No, it cannot be halted, he said. Two decades
later, his son, Dr. Farooq Abdullah, Chief Minister of J&K was to approve the public burning of these skins. In 1986, the Central Government of India banned the trade in wildlife skins.

The furriers took the government to court and succeeded in getting a “stay” order halting the implementation of the ban. As a result of NGO intervention in the court case, the stay was lifted and the ban came into force in 1992.

Yet in Kashmir, this trade remained legal and licensed, since J&K state had a separate wildlife law. That law was brought on par with the Central Law only in 2002, which threw up the question, what to do with stocks of skins, furs and garments (some of which
were considered to be legally held by licensed furriers)?

To a committee appointed in 1997, furriers numbering 224 offered to surrender their stocks knowing a ban was imminent; an inventory was made and the value was determined. But where was the money, all of Rs.9.42 crores (US$ 2,400,000) to compensate the furriers?

The Central Government refused to give the amount because that would amount to buying wildlife skins. The Central Government had already refused to do that for ivory traders and furriers in the rest of the country and their stand was accepted by the Delhi
High Court in 1997 and upheld by the Supreme Court of India. The trickiest question was: should the government of J&K agree to compensate furriers? A move that could appear as if the state was buying wildlife articles, There was an impasse.

A solution was proposed: compensation would not be given for the stock, but as rehabilitation grants to artisans. That opened a Pandora’s box because hundreds of artisans came forward to claim the grant whereas the furriers were traders and not at all artisans.
The furriers then filed a case in the High Court of J&K in 2006 asking for the amounts promised to them when their stock was surrendered. The Court’s decision instructed the J&K Government to deposit the amount with the High Court, which would then release
the funds to the 224 furriers.

This process of paying compensation to furriers is ongoing and the stage was set for the burning of the furs and skins. At one stage, the temptation could have been to challenge - in the Supreme Court - the decision of the J&K High Court to compensate the
furriers. There is little doubt that based on the Delhi High Court judgment of 1997 and upheld by Supreme Court, such a petition could have been admitted, halting the process of destruction of stocks. A more balanced view was that Rs. 9.42 crores was just
money that could bury a gory past once and for all.

Yet Kashmir, the paradise on earth, has its serpents. There is said to be as yet hidden, undeclared stocks. That story is beginning to unfold to be chronicled another day.

The burning of many truckloads of fur garments and skins was started by J&K’s Wildlife Department on December 3, 2007 in Srinagar, Kashmir. Chief Wildlife Officer A K Srivastava observed that they had waited many years for this moment to arrive. I lit the first
torch and lowered a tiger skin onto the pyre. As the flames leapt skywards, I witnessed history being made. Going up in flames was the largest single agglomeration of wildlife skins anywhere in the world. Wild species have respite from the Kashmir fur trade
but there are newer challenges to wild species from the emergence of new markets in China. At no time can we give up the battle.

What is killing India’s endangered gharials? 17 of the critically endangered crocodile-like critters have been found dead in the Chambal River in recent weeks, a terrible blow to a species whose population boasts just 200 breeding pairs.

Whatever killed the gharials -- most likely a "bacterial disease," according to wildlife conservator V K Pattnaik -- wreaked havoc on their liver and lungs. And the 17 found bodies may not be the only ones affected. According to the news agency UNI, unofficial
death tallies could be in the dozens over the last week alone.

According to the IUCN Red List, gharial populations plummeted from as high as 10,000 in 1946 to just 200 in 1974, mostly due to hunting for their skins. Current threats are mostly habitat-related, with irrigation, sand-mining and commercial river traffic
destroying the gharial’s river home.

The IUCN downgraded the gharial from "endangered" to "critically endangered" earlier this year. At this rate, it may not be long before it is downgraded again -- if not lost forever.

According to the International Ecotourism Society, the market for conservation-oriented tourism continues to grow; in 2004, worldwide ecotourism and nature tourism were growing three times faster than the tourism industry as a whole.

The popularity of nature-based travel led the United Nations to hold a World Ecotourism Summit and declare 2002 the International Year of Ecotourism. More than 55 million Americans are interested in sustainable travel, which protects both environment and
culture, according to a study by the Travel Industry Association of America sponsored by National Geographic Traveler.

"We believe India must take a proactive and leadership position on the issue of climate change. It is also important to assert the linkages between increasing weather disasters and climate change. It is clear that while we will never be able to make absolute
predictions or direct correlations between events that we see around us and the warming that is now inevitable, there is enough evidence to make connections. For instance, we know that climate change will lead to intensification of tropical cyclone events,
like the one in Bangladesh, which has devastated the lives of millions in that country. We also know that rainfall in our world will become more variable – devastating for people dependent on rainfed agriculture. We can already see the rapid melting of glaciers
(http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=1), which will threaten water security in large parts of the country.

Biofuels are being touted as the new panacea for climate problems. All the biofuel in the world will be a blip on the world’s total fuel consumption. In the us, for instance, it’s agreed that if the entire corn crop is used to make ethanol, it will replace
only 12 per cent of current gasoline—petrol—used in the country.If we factor in fuel inputs that go into converting biomass to energy—from diesel to run tractors, natural gas to make fertilizers, fuel to run refineries—biofuel is not energy-efficient. It is
estimated that only about 20 per cent of corn-made ethanol is ‘new’ energy. This reckoning does not account for the water it will take to grow this new crop. There are fears that rainforest might be cut to expand biofuel crop cultivation; this will contribute
substantially to climate change.

So how should biofuel be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Any strategy must be founded on an understanding that biofuels aren’t substitutes for fossil fuels, they can make a difference if we limit our fuel consumption. If that’s the case, governments
should not give subsidies to grow crops for biofuel. They should, instead, invest in public transport that will reduce the number of vehicles on roads. Biofuels should be just for public buses and only if cars get off the road

Biofuels could be a part of the climate solution but only if they are used to help the world’s poor to leapfrog to a non-fossil fuel-based energy future. The poor are today providing the world its only real opportunity to avoid emissions. For, the bulk of renewable
energy -80 per cent-is the biomass-based energy used by the poorest to meet their cooking, lighting and fuel needs.

So, the opportunity for a biofuel revolution is not in the rich world’s cities to run vehicles-but in the grid-unconnected world of Indian or African villages, where there is a scarcity of electricity for homes, and generator sets to pump water and to run
vehicles. It here that fossil fuel use will grow because there is no alternative. Instead of bringing fossil fuel long distances to feed this market, this part of the world can leapfrog to a new energy future. The biofuel can come from non-edible tree crops-jatropha
in India, for example-grown on wasteland.

The irony is that it is the poor in the world who provide us breathing space today. Currently, about 80 per cent of renewable energy is biomass based energy used by the poorest to meet their cooking, lighting and fuel needs. This also provides us the opportunity
for a biofuel revolution – reinventing the energy options for millions who are still unconnected to the fossil fuel grid (http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=9). In this challenge,
our forests can be critical players – planting trees to provide employment, which will also absorb carbon dioxide and increase the sinks for our emissions (http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=10).

The rate at which devlopment is taking place , especially in less developed countries like India, forests and wetlands are lost even before we have explored and indexed the wildlife living in those areas.

So no wonder that many of us feel that time has come to save all wildlife in forests, wetlands and oceans. In other words let us save the habitat and not just the species in the habitat we know is endangered.

“Seventy percent of the world is ocean and eighty percent of global biodiversity is in it. We need to take care of the ocean. No matter where we are, we depend on it.”
–Wallace J. Nichols

Wallace J. Nichols does much of his turtle research in Baja California, Mexico.

For at least 150 million years, sea turtles have roamed the Earth’s oceans. This makes them at least 858 times older than the first Homo sapiens. Survivors of the mass extinction that wiped dinosaurs out, enduring lengthy travels along the sea and fighting
heavy predation that results in survival statistics of about one in a thousand, they have managed to stay around. That is, until now. Out of the seven species of marine turtles in the world, six feature as endangered or critically endangered in the Red List
of Threatened Species, a list compiled by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) and updated every year with the best available scientific information. Humans bear direct responsibility.